Brighton-based illustrator Richard Wilkinson celebrates our passion for collecting and the diversity of the natural world with a series of imaginary, Star Wars-inspired insects. Drawn to scientists’ elaborate systems of classification, and seeing the impulse to collect and categorize as central even to those of us not in the sciences, Wilkinson offers up a unique taxonomy of his own favourite things. As he explains:

“It seemed to me the best way to celebrate that link between the world of natural history classification and that of modern obsessions, while at the same time indulging my own love of painting these incredible forms and colours and surfaces, and my own obsessions from modern culture, was to try to create insects, plants, animals, etc. that resemble these icons of the modern world.”

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